baseness and meanness of spirit. 'Tis a cowardly and servile humour to hide and disguise a man's self under a vizor, and not to dare to shew himself what he is. By that our followers are train'd up to treachery. Being brought up to speak what is not true, they make no conscience of a lye. A generous heart ought not to belye its own thoughts, but will make it self seen within, all there is good, or at least manly. MONTAIGNE: Essays, Cotton's 3d ed., ch. lxxiv. SWIFT. It is possible for a man who hath the appearance of religion to be wicked and an hypocrite; The favourable and good word of men comes but it is impossible for a man who openly deoftentimes at a very easy rate; and by a few declares against religion to give any reasonable mure looks and affected whims, set off with some security that he will not be false and cruel. odd devotional postures and grimaces, and such other little acts of dissimulation, cunning men Whoever is a hypocrite in his religion mocks will do wonders. SOUTH. God, presenting to him the outside, and reservThe fawning, sneaking, and flattering hypo-ing the inward for his enemy. crite, that will do or be anything for his own advantage. STILLINGFLEET. Hypocrisy is much more eligible than open infidelity and vice: it wears the livery of religion, and is cautious of giving scandal: nay, continued disguises are too great a constraint; JEREMY TAYLOR. It is hard to personate and act a part long; for where truth is not at the bottom, nature will always be endeavouring to return, and will pass out and betray herself one time or other. TILLOTSON. "how it showed Answering his great idea," to its present use, when this person "has an idea that the train has started," and the other "had no idea that the dinner would be so bad"! TRENCH. The original of sensible and spiritual ideas may be owing to sensation and reflection; the recollection and fresh excitation of them to other occasions. DR. I. WATTS: Logic. Idleness is the badge of gentry, the bane of body and mind, the nurse of naughtiness, the stepmother of discipline, the chief author of all mischief, one of the seven deadly sins, the Those are adequate ideas which perfectly and a great cause not only of melancholy, but cushion upon which the devil chiefly reposes, represent their archetypes or objects. Inade of many other diseases: for the mind is naturally quate are but a partial or incomplete represen-active; and if it be not occupied about some tation of those archetypes to which they are honest business, it rushes into mischief or sinks referred. DR. I. WATTS: Logic. into melancholy. ROBERT BURTON. The form under which these things appear to the mind, or the result of our apprehensions, is called an idea. DR. I. WATTS. Those inward representations of spirit, thought, love, and hatred, are pure and mental ideas, belonging to the mind, and carry nothing of shape or sense in them. DR. I. WATTS. IDENTITY. Identity is a relation between our cognitions of a thing, not between things themselves. SIR W. HAMILTON. Since consciousness always accompanies thinking, and it is that that makes every one to be what he calls self, and thereby distinguishes himself from all other thinking beings, in this alone consists personal identity, i.e. the sameness of a rational being. LOCKE. The identity of the same man consists in nothing but a participation of the same continued life by constantly fleeting particles of matter in succession vitally united to the same organized body. LOCKE. If we take away consciousness of pleasure and pain, it will be hard to know wherein to place personal identity. LOCKE. I cannot remember a thing that happened a year ago, without a conviction, as strong as memory can give, that I, the same identical person who now remember that event, did then exist. IDLENESS. T. REID. that hour, instead of idling it away? ness. Some one, in casting up his accounts, put down a very large sum per annum for his idleBut there is another account more awful than that of our expenses, in which many will find that their idleness has mainly contributed to the balance against them. From its very inaction, idleness ultimately becomes the most active cause of evil; as a palsy is more to be dreaded than a fever. The Turks have a proverb which says that the devil tempts all other men, but that idle men tempt the devil. COLTON: Lacon. In my opinion, idleness is no less the pest of society, than of solitude. Nothing contracts the mind, nothing engenders trifles, tales, backbiting, slander, and falsities, so much as being shut up in a room, opposite each other, and reduced to no other occupation than the necessity of continual chattering. When all are employed, they speak only when they have something to say; but if you are doing nothing, you must absolutely talk incessantly, which of all constraints is the most troublesome and the most dangerous. I dare go even further, and maintain, that to render a circle truly agreeable, every one must be not only doing something, but something which requires a little attention. ROUSSEAU. I do find, therefore, in this enchanted glass, four idols, or false appearances, of several distinct sorts, every sort comprehending many divisions. The first sort I call idols of the nation or tribe; the second, idols of the den or cave; the third, idols of the forum; and the fourth, idols of the theatre. BACON: Novum Organum, Book I. The deities of a thousand groves and a thousand streams possessed in peace their local and respective influence; nor could the Roman, who deprecated the wrath of the Tiber, deride the Egyptian, who presented his offering to the beneficent genius of the Nile. Every virtue, and even vice, acquired its divine representative; every art and profession its patron, whose attributes, even in the most distant ages and nations, were uniformly derived from the character of their peculiar votaries. It was the custom [of the Romans] to tempt the protectors of besieged cities by the promise of more distinguished honours than they possessed in their native country. Rome gradually became the common temple of her subjects, and the freedom of the city was bestowed on all the gods of mankind. GIBBON: Decline and Fall, vol. i. The religion of the nations was not merely a speculative doctrine, professed in the schools or preached in the temples. The innumerable deities and rites of polytheism were closely interwoven with every circumstance of business or pleasure, of public or of private life; and it seemed impossible to escape the observance of them without, at the same time, renouncing the commerce of mankind. The important transactions of peace and war were prepared or concluded by solemn sacrifices, in which the magistrate, the senator, and the soldier were obliged to participate. GIBBON: Decline and Fall. Idolatry is not to be looked upon as a mere speculative error respecting the object of worship, of little or no practical efficacy. Its hold upon the mind of a fallen creature is most tena. cious, its operation most extensive. It is a corrupt practical institution, involving a whole system of sentiments and manners which perfectly moulds and transforms its votaries. It modifies human nature under every aspect under which it can be contemplated, being intimately blended and incorporated with all its perceptions of good and evil, with all its infirmities, passions, and fears. ROBERT HALL: Address to Rev. Eustace Carey. Idolatry is not only an accounting or worshipping that for God which is not God, but it is also a worshipping the true God in a way unsuitable to his nature, and particularly by the mediation of images and corporal resemblances. SOUTH. Idolatry is certainly the first-born of folly, the great and leading paradox; nay, the very abridgment and sum total of all absurdities. SOUTH. Philosophers and common heathen believed one God, to whom all things were referred; but under this God they worshipped many inferior and subservient gods. STILLINGFLEET. So In this mania for foreign gods the nobles and the emperors themselves set the most corrupting examples. Germanicus and Agrippina devoted themselves especially to Egyptian gods. also Vespasian. Nero served all gods, with the exception of the Dea Syra. Marcus Aurelius caused the priests of all foreign gods and nations to be assembled in order to implore aid for the Roman empire against the incursions of the Marcomanni. Commodus caused himself to be initiated into the mysteries of the Egyptian Isis and the Persian Mithras. Severus worshipped especially the Egyptian Serapis ; Caracalla chiefly the Egyptian Isis; and Heliogabalus the Syrian deities; though he was desirous of becoming a priest of the Jewish, Samaritan, and Christian religions. THOLUCK. When complaints are made-often not altoTo write or talk concerning any subject, without having previously taken the pains to under-gether without reason-of the prevailing ignostand it, is a breach of the duty which we owe rance of facts on such or such subjects, it will to ourselves, though it may be no offence against often be found that the parties censured, though the laws of the land. The privilege of talking possessing less knowledge than is desirable, yet and even publishing nonsense is necessary in a possess more than they know what to do with. Their deficiency in arranging and applying their free state; but the more sparingly we make use COLERIDGE. of it the better. knowledge, in combining facts, and correctly deducing, and rightly employing, general principles, will be perhaps greater than their ignorance WHATELY: Pref. to Bacon's Essays. Rude and unpolished are all the operations of the soul in their beginnings, before they are cultivated with art and study. DRYDEN. of facts. ILL-NATURE. The ill-natured man gives himself a large field to expatiate in: he exposes those failings in human nature which the other would cast a veil over. ADDISON. By indulging this fretful temper you alienate those on whose affection much of your comfort depends. BLAIR. But the greatest part of those who set mankind at defiance by hourly irritation, and who live but to infuse malignity and multiply enemies, have no hopes to foster, no designs to promote, nor any expectations of attaining power by insolence, or of climbing to greatness by trampling on others. They give up all sweets of kindness for the sake of peevishness, petulance, or gloom; and alienate the world by neglect of the common forms of civility, and breach of the established laws of conversation. DR. S. JOHNSON: Rambler, No. 56. Peevishness may be considered the canker of life, that destroys its vigour, and checks its improvement; that creeps on with hourly depredations, and taints and vitiates what it cannot DR. S. JOHNSON. consume. Though it [peevishness] breaks not out in paroxysms of outrage, it wears out happiness by slow corrosion. DR. S. JOHNSON. Some natures are so sour and ungrateful that L'ESTRANGE. they are never to be obliged. Ill-nature . . . consists of a proneness to do ill turns, attended with a secret joy upon the sight of any mischief that befalls another, and of an utter insensibility of any kindness done him. SOUTH. Wheresoever you see ingratitude, you may as infaliibly conclude that there is a growing stock of ill-nature in that breast, as you may know that man to have the plague upon whom you see the tokens. SOUTH. Anything that is apt to disturb the world, and to alienate the affections of men from one another, such as cross and distasteful humours, is either expressly, or by clear consequence and deduction, forbidden in the New Testament. TALOTSON. IMAGINATION. The sound and proper exercise of the imagination may be made to contribute to the cultivation of all that is virtuous and estimable in the human character. ABERCROMBIE. The truth of it is, I look upon a sound imagination as the greatest blessing in life, next to a clear judgment, and a good conscience. In the mean time, since there are very few whose minds are not more or less subject to these dreadful thoughts and apprehensions, we ought to arm ourselves against them by the dictates of reason and religion, "to pull the old woman out of our hearts" (as Persius expresses it in the motto of my paper) and extinguish those impertinent notions which we imbibed at a time that we are not able to judge of their absurdity. Or if we believe, as many wise and good men have done, that there are such phantoms and apparitions as those I have been speaking of, let us endeavour to establish to ourselves an inter est in Him who holds the reins of the whole creation in his hands, and moderates them after such a manner that it is impossible for one being to break loose upon another without his knowledge and permission. ADDISON: Spectator, No. 12. A man of a polite imagination is let into a great many pleasures that the vulgar are not capable of receiving. He can converse with a picture, and find an agreeable companion in a statue. He meets with a secret refreshment in a description, and often feels a greater satisfaction in the prospect of fields and meadows than another does in the possession. It gives him, indeed, a kind of property in everything he sees, and makes the most rude uncultivated parts of nature administer to his pleasures: so that he looks upon the world as it were in another light, and discovers in it a multitude of charms that conceal themselves from the generality of mankind. ADDISON: Spectator, No. 411. The pleasures of the imagination are not wholly confined to such particular authors as are conversant in material objects, but are often to be met with among the polite masters of morality, criticism, and other speculations abstracted from matter, who, though they do not directly treat of the visible parts of nature, often draw from them similitudes, metaphors, and allegories. By these allusions, a truth in the understanding is, as it were, reflected by the imagination; we are able to see something like colour and shape in a notion, and to discover a scheme of thoughts traced out upon matter. And here the mind receives a great deal of satisfaction, and has two of its faculties gratified at the same time, while the fancy is busy in copying after the understanding, and transcribing ideas out of the intellectual world into the material. ADDISON: Spectator, No. 421. It is this talent of affecting the imagination that gives an embellishment to good sense, and makes one man's compositions more agreeable than another's. It sets off all writings in general, but is the very life and highest perfection of poetry. Where it shines in an eminent degree, it has preserved several poems for many ages, that have nothing else to recommend them; and where all the other beauties are present, the work appears dry and insipid if this single one be wanting. It has something in it like creation. It bestows a kind of existence, and draws up to the reader's view several objects which are not to be found in being. It makes additions to nature, and gives a greater variety to God's works. In a word, it is able to beautify and adorn the most illustrious scenes in the universe, or to fill the mind with more glorious shows and apparitions than can be found in any part of it. ADDISON: Spectator, No. 421. By imagination, a man in a dungeon is capa ble of entertaining himself with scenes and landscapes more beautiful than any that can be found in the whole compass of nature. ADDISON. Imagination I understand to be the representation of an individual thought. Imagination is of three kinds: joined with belief of that which is to come; joined with memory of that which is past; and of things present, or as if they were present: for I comprehend in this, imagination feigned and at pleasure,—as if one should imagine such a man to be in the vestments of a pope, or to have wings. LORD BACON. Imagination is like to work better upon sleepLORD BACON. ing men than men awake. The imagination of a poet is a thing so nice and delicate that it is no easy matter to find out images capable of giving pleasure to one of the |
